IN 2018, Sally Cookson and the Bristol Old Vic company devised a play from Patrick Ness’s 2011 young adults book A Monster Calls, with Adam Peck as the “writer in the room.” They took the fantastic presence of the imaginary Monster living in the ancient yew tree and brought his intervention to vivid theatrical life.
The play won national awards, but its planned UK tour was scuppered by Covid. Now Somerset audiences can see it again at Strode Theatre in Street, where 12 members of the Street Theatre Company, directed by Karen Trevis, have created a stunningly effective production which calls for fantasy and reality to mix as we explore our own fears and preconceptions.
Conor O’Malley is a 14-year-old boy whose mother is dying of cancer. His father has a new wife and child and lives in America. His grandmother is a strict traditionalist with whom he has little in common. The target of constant bullying at school, he always denies any difficulties preventing the helpless staff from protecting him.
And some nights, at seven minutes past midnight, the monster calls, telling complex stories about human nature and demanding the truth from Conor.
The play weaves old folklore and modern medicine in a prescription for self-knowledge, growing up and facing facts. It demands exceptional acting from the actor playing Conor – Ethan Jones tears out the audience’s heart as he battles to keep awareness of his mother’s condition deep in his sub-conscious. He’s not helped by his selfish father (Tris Hann), keener to pander to his new wife and her neurosis than to his needy son. Just a slight American drawl would have helped this characterisation, as it referred to in the text.
Nicky Hann is his mother, putting on a brave face as treatment after treatment fails, and Elaine Hayne is the dependable grandmother.
Harley Compton carries off the role of the bully-in-chief with snarling, grinning guile – it’s about him that the play’s only joke is told. He’s so clever and charismatic he may well end up as Prime Minister, and that must have been even funnier in the middle of the pandemic.
The Monster himself is played by Neil Howiantz, sonorously forcing the frightened boy to face his own demons from the guise of the centuries-old tree which has been the O’Malley backdrop in good times and bad.
The company is onstage throughout, choreographed through fear and mystery and violence, telling this powerfully memorable story that has resonances in most 21st century lives.
GP-W